Awesome!!
ORBZ
Member Posts: 1,304
I LOVE GameSalad, it's friggin awesome. BUUT alas, I had to ditch it... why?
Because after over a year of struggling with constant restarts and memory leaks I finally bit the bullet and dove into Corona. HUGE MISTAKE! Man that tool sucks balls! !@#$% CORONA! So I came back to GS, working some more on my project hoping that 0.9.0 would have fixed the MEMORY HOLE that causes me to have to restart GameSalad on my 8GB MacBook Pro every 20 mins. I finally decided to redo my game from scratch in Unity. Yup, 3D space.. at first it made my head hurt but I decided to just turn off the Z dimension and think in 2D. After about a week of messing with unity I can honestly say WOW why the hell didn't I do this sooner?!?
It can do anything GS can do any much much more. If GS would get their act together and fix the memory leak I'd use it for more projects, but as it is it's a huge waste of my time. I have used unity for days at a time, and NEVER ONCE have I had to restart it. Not only that but the debugger lets me step through my code line by line. Oh, and recreating my GS game in Unity took about 15 lines of Unity code. Granted, I'm not done yet, but with all the built in physics and joints and native VECTOR DATA TYPES and ARRAYS it was trivial to rig up the scene and then push go.
Oh, and the plugins let me hook in iAds and InApp Purchasing. Sweet!
I don't want to bash GS but come on guys! FIX THE FRIGGIN MEMORY HOLE! It's the only application on my mac that requires constant restarts. That's just lame and that's how you lost one of your year long members to Unity. Constant restarts are frustrating as hell!!!!
GS is great, just get your act together on the constant restarts please and maybe I'll revisit it in the future.
To anyone thinking about Unity or that it might be to hard. GO FOR IT! Really not much coding required once you get the hang of it.
A nice side bonus: Asking questions in the forums are usually answered by professional game devs who work for big studios.
Bonus #2: REALLY WELL DOCUMENTED!!!
Because after over a year of struggling with constant restarts and memory leaks I finally bit the bullet and dove into Corona. HUGE MISTAKE! Man that tool sucks balls! !@#$% CORONA! So I came back to GS, working some more on my project hoping that 0.9.0 would have fixed the MEMORY HOLE that causes me to have to restart GameSalad on my 8GB MacBook Pro every 20 mins. I finally decided to redo my game from scratch in Unity. Yup, 3D space.. at first it made my head hurt but I decided to just turn off the Z dimension and think in 2D. After about a week of messing with unity I can honestly say WOW why the hell didn't I do this sooner?!?
It can do anything GS can do any much much more. If GS would get their act together and fix the memory leak I'd use it for more projects, but as it is it's a huge waste of my time. I have used unity for days at a time, and NEVER ONCE have I had to restart it. Not only that but the debugger lets me step through my code line by line. Oh, and recreating my GS game in Unity took about 15 lines of Unity code. Granted, I'm not done yet, but with all the built in physics and joints and native VECTOR DATA TYPES and ARRAYS it was trivial to rig up the scene and then push go.
Oh, and the plugins let me hook in iAds and InApp Purchasing. Sweet!
I don't want to bash GS but come on guys! FIX THE FRIGGIN MEMORY HOLE! It's the only application on my mac that requires constant restarts. That's just lame and that's how you lost one of your year long members to Unity. Constant restarts are frustrating as hell!!!!
GS is great, just get your act together on the constant restarts please and maybe I'll revisit it in the future.
To anyone thinking about Unity or that it might be to hard. GO FOR IT! Really not much coding required once you get the hang of it.
A nice side bonus: Asking questions in the forums are usually answered by professional game devs who work for big studios.
Bonus #2: REALLY WELL DOCUMENTED!!!
Comments
It's a shame your going, and I would say its not cool knocking GS and promoting Unity but there's been so many adverts for Corona on here the past few days, its almost refreshing to hear someone say Corona sucks balls...so your forgiven.
I was looking at the unity promo vids the other days, some amazing games have been done with it. And the software looks so polished. If I wasn't so scared of code I'd make the jump but I used to hate working with Action Script in Flash and that was easy coding. I know my way around 3d programs pretty well e.g. 3DS Max so it is tempting though.
But GameSalad is still amazing, I can make games without knowing any code and just dropping behaviours in and tracking attributes. I can test on my phone, publish adhoc versions send them out, it looks like it will be getting better and better over the next year with all the rumoured things. So I'm going to hang tight.... for the time being...Also its free for everyone (Though I paid for Pro :-)....
Good luck in Unity...may the force be with you....Always.... Arrrghghghghg....
(That's a wookie roar at the end)
(Why the star wars reference, ... I have no bloody idea... ...)
- Fix the restart bugs, i should never need to restart GS, EVER!
- Give me Vectors and Arrays
- Allow me to link two objects together.
- Plugin Support
- Proper Documentation
I'm still going to use GS for prototyping ideas, but I just can't use it for production with the constant restarts. It ruins my train of thought.
As to the comment about price: I paid $400 for Unity iPhone Basic license, free if you just want to make Win/Mac games. NO SUBSCRIPTION!
@massali
I know how to code, but it's not really that much code needed. A lot of it is Drag and Drop. A lot of scripts are pre-built for you and you just drop them onto the objects you want to apply the behavior on. I know NOTHING about 3D math or 3D modeling.
hey. windows paint is sooo easy!!! photoshop is just tooo complicated.
seriously everyone. in every profession there are rules to be followed, softwares we need to learn, suits we have to use.
its time to stop being lazy and do what it needs to be done to make better games.
I enjoy making them with GameSalad...its a hobby with some potential of making money...
Sure they may come out with gamecenter by the next update, but the whole point is to have it ready when gamecenter launched. Same applies for the mac app store.
It's sad but I know I'm going to have to move on
it was specifically aimed at whoever wants to take game development to the next step. I'm sure only 10% of users over here would go into this category.
in march, it will be 2 years that i started using gamesalad. in all this time the software didn't even get out of beta. still lacks BASIC game-development features. still crashes like crazy. etc. so yeah. not a piece of software you can trust and put in your pipeline with your eyes closed.
2 years ago, when the software was still 0.4.6, i thought gamesalad was going to be the best thing ever. not anymore.
DL
DL
2D is basically 3D but with one axis ignored/removed...
So if an engine can do 3D, then it should always be able to be used for 2D too. So a 3D engine is better in the long run as it gives you options to do both.
But whenever anyone (and I mean anyone) chimes in and says their way is the way to go if you're serious I just have to say something.
I'm sure Utopian Games' Darren and co. are serious about their games, and the money their games make for them.
I'm sure Tshirt is serious about his games, as was Joe when he made Grisly Manor.
To call the rest of us, essentially amateurs for using this software instead of the one you use is perhaps true of a lot of people here. But it's not true of everyone, and is frankly insulting.
Working with the tools I have and know doesn't make me any less serious about my games. A lot of care and attention goes into them.
Yes, they might be better if made with another engine, but that doesn't mean I'm not serious about them. Not at all.
Sorry to rant - It's not entirely aimed at you!
QS
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
"Working with the tools I have and know doesn't make me any less serious about my games. A lot of care and attention goes into them.
Yes, they might be better if made with another engine, but that doesn't mean I'm not serious about them. Not at all."
Fantastic.
Xcode is definitely the way to go for serious game developers. if you consider yourself one or wants to be one, you should be looking into it...
...its time to stop being lazy and do what it needs to be done to make better games.
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
Orbs comes and in a tantrum says !@#$% this, suck balls and nothing happens... Not even an edit?
Orbs, I really think you are great at what you do, you may have an A+ in math but an F- in class.
I just think that this was unnecessary so bon voyage and best of luck over there...
To the GS people and the sous chef, wake up and don't get intimidated by anybody, no matter how good they are. Treat every body as equal...
i never meant to say that you are only serious if you use x or y tool. i just think its natural that when you reach the limit of a certain tool, you will automatically look for the next best thing. that is happening to me, that is what happened to joe, to robotvswizards, orbz and im sure it will happen with you guys eventually. i know you have played with corona already, but went back to gs. so you have tried taking your first step already.
so yes, i really do believe the serious developers here will move on eventually.
and just to be clear. im totally on the side of "it doesnt matter what sotware you use. what really matters are your ideas philosophy."
No worries mate, and I honestly can't wait to play the game you showed me made in Unity
I'm just very tired of people coming here and saying 'You should use this, it's much better - you're idiots for staying' - usually by people who have made very simple or dull games (if any at all!).
Obviously I'm not including you in this as Poodle Invasion is *still* one of my fave iphone games!
I'm still looking at Corona - of course I am. It's useful to keep your eye on what else is out there!
It's very nice, and I like it (my fave part was setting up Terminal - when I got it to display with Green Retro Text on a black background, I jumped up and down with joy! I felt like Neo in the Matrix! AWESOME!!!).
The main reason I like it though, and see it as an alternative, is because of no splash screen and the social features. That's pretty much it.
Joe (and I hate to speak *for* him) has said that the GS Direct debacle is what got him interested in Corona.
The reason I don't like it, and what puts me off the forums/community there, is that the people who run it seem intent on badmouthing GameSalad at every opportunity. I think that's immature, unprofessional, and just scummy if I'm honest.
I am personally still learning new stuff in GameSalad nearly two years on from when I started, usually from people I like and respect on the forums. And I have so many games I want to make, and so little time, learning a new SDK will only delay me (especially when I can do 90% of what I want to with GS).
And what the hell is a vector data type anyway???
Now, it's not all unicorns and rainbows. I've critiqued GameSalad enough myself. I am literally begging them to give us Twitter/Facebook/GameCentre, like yesterday, and I hope they're looking into doing something with the splash screen (fingers crossed). I think they're far to slow to give us new stuff (it used to be once a month!) but I know they plan on scaling up.
You mentioned a while ago that we needed social features in GS, and I said at the time that they're a nice addition, but not *needed*.
Guess what? You were right. I was wrong.
I think they're relying too much on trying to get the brand out there whatever way they can, and that really, the best way to attract new users and people to our games is to essentially keep us happy. Give us, their customers, what we really need to keep our customers (I prefer 'players') happy.
Anyway, I've ranted for far too long as usual!
Cheers for reading!
QS
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
I've been reliably informed that a 'Vector Data Type' is an array.
Who knew, right?
QS
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
Personally, I just like using a tool that gets the job done for me based on what I am doing at the time... and so far GS has been good despite the setbacks. If anything, at least I am having fun.
So its another update that doesnt really address the fundamental issues..? Am I going to be looking at a big bowl of disappointment and further frustration?
I completely understand where Orbz and the others that have moved on are coming from... Im close to making the jump myself.
Cheers,
QS
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
Youve let quite a bit out of the bag already...you might as well just finish it off now...
If anything, perceptions (whether real or not) of GameSalad's inability to deliver the features that you want should be seen as a positive. It shows that you have a resolve and dedication to getting things done - to a point that you are willing to jump to another technology and start over. Not ideal, but that's the way it goes.
Technologies and companies surge/lag/fail all the time and sometimes you need to just get on with it and move on. If I counted the number of companies that developed (and sold) .Net component companies I have supported over the years that left me disappointed, I would have given up a long time ago. Rather I chose to move on and find something else that met my needs or cultural fit of the times. Voice your concerns, and if they are not met in what you would consider a reasonable amount of time, move on.
BTW, I hope you do come back to the boards every once in awhile ORBZ... if for no other reason than to let us know what you have been creating! I definitely appreciated your contributions here on the forums and your templates drove me insane on more than one occasion as to how I could exploit their awesomeness. Best of luck.